Fat & Drunk: Wrong
Fat & Drunk is a serial essay-based memoir by Andrea Lien. To read the full entries, become a paid subscriber at remappingmyself.substack.com.
Read the previous entry to Fat & Drunk here: Prologue
Wrong
In our bedroom, we have a La-Z-Boy chair that not only reclines but also swivels and rocks. I love it. I’m in it. I’m sitting next to the open window listening to the birds. And then a dog barks in the distance. So Griffin barks. He growls and huffs and trots off to the front door to bark at whatever’s out there doing the same to its owners. But I have to stop him because my dad’s asleep in the lower level of the house. I have to stop him because it’s wrong for him to bark. It’s wrong for him to make noise. It’s wrong to wake up my dad. If Dan were home, it’d be wrong to disrupt him, too. And because I let it happen, I’m wrong. I should have shut the door to the bedroom. I should have closed the window. So, instead, I fetch him from the front door and shepherd him back to the bedroom where I shut the door. We’ll do this at least five times today.
On my way back to the bedroom, I see the detritus on the carpet—stuff he’s dragged in from outdoors. Pieces of leaves, shells from sunflower seeds. I shouldn’t keep buying the birdseed with the sunflower seeds because the birds scatter them everywhere, then Griffin lies in them, and then the big Great Pyrenees and Anatolian shepherd mix trails them through the house like confetti. Or nature’s glitter. But I did buy them and now it’s all over the place. I’ll have to send the robotic vacuum through the house to erase my mess.
As I sit down again to get back to work, I’m leaning a little to the right. Somehow, my chair seems to be breaking a little bit. I thought I’d bought one with a higher weight limit, like it might be indestructible, but I guess I might be wrecking this one, too. Like so many chairs before it. I shift my weight to try to burden the left side of the chair. We’ll see how long I can make this work. I’m sure the ergonomics are gold-star, but I can’t bear to wreck another chair.
So I settle in, take a gulp from my coffee with oat milk, and reach into the bag I’ve placed on the side table. It’s from the chocolate shop in one of the little towns on the river that I’ve loved for a long time, St. Croix Chocolate Company. I bought the chocolates yesterday while I was taking Dad for a drive.
Of course I bought them. I was stressed. And of course I’m trying to lose weight, so I’ve fucked it up now. As if the moment is in the past, it’s so certain. It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s done.
I take out a chocolate—one of my favorites, with a peanut butter center—and feel the relief as I put it in my mouth. Sometimes, I barely taste them, but the fact that they exist, I have them, and I just ate one brings all the relief I apparently needed.
Not great for the weight loss, though. There is no relief in that. So, I’ll do as I usually do. What I’ve done for the past four decades. I’ll eat them steadily until they’re gone and the temptation is out of my proximity. Then I’ll feel a different kind of relief, one that makes me a worthwhile person. A person who’s living a life worth living. Someone who’s no longer wrong . . . because I ate the wrong. It’s gone.
Except it’s still here. Always.
